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13.08.2012

Each little zolpidem pill increases your cancer risk

The sleeping tablet zolpidem – marketed as Stilnoct and Ambien – increases the risk of cancer. According to a Taiwanese study of more than 14,000 users of zolpidem, each day that you use the sleeping tablet, you increase your chance of developing cancer.

Many people who use a very large amount of steroids have trouble sleeping, and some of them turn for help to pharmacological sleeping pills. One of these, according to fora for bodybuilders, is zolpidem.

Epidemiologists recently discovered that pharmacological sleeping tablets are unhealthier than we thought. They increase the expectation of death because they double the chance of developing cancer. [BMJ Open. 2012 Feb 27;2(1):e000850.]

A few weeks ago Mayo Clinic Proceedings published an article by oncologists at the Taiwanese China Medical University in Taichung who had studied thousands of patients who had been using zolpidem for years. The researchers compared the zolpidem users with patients who didn't use zolpidem and discovered that zolpidem increased the chance of developing cancer.

The table below shows the amount of zolpidem that the researchers' patients used annually. Zolpidem is safe up to a dose of 30 mg (3 pills) a year. More than this and the chance of cancer begins to increase. Patients who used only zolpidem to relieve their sleeping problems and who used more than 300 mg a year increased their chances of developing cancer by a factor of six.

In particular, there was a rise in the risk of oral cancer and cancer of the oesophagus. The Taiwanese researchers suspect that zolpidem increases the amount of stomach acid. That acid can continuously damage cells in the oesophagus and in the oral cavity and pharynx and can increase the risk of healthy cells turning into cancer cells.

We dare to speculate that the interaction between steroids and zolpidem may be disastrous in some cases. Juicers have already many strange cells in their oral cavities...

Source:
Mayo Clin Proc. 2012 May;87(5):430-6.